Thursday, September 01, 2005

Friday

I remember writing this piece 11 months ago, on a Friday...

fridays are when i try to get a grip on my sanity and hang on, long enough to spend a meaningful weekend ahead. i don't care if i lose the handle (again) come mondays for as long as i had the "weekend". but this friday, today, is going to be different. this friday i'm going to get my life back. i've spent a big part of the past months living inside my head. i'm in the real world but i'm not really here. i'm in an alternate universe. sure, i wake up. i face this computer and work or i appear to be working. i have lunch at 11:30 with friends at work. we exchange stories and share laughs. i shop for things when i have the time and money. and then i go home and stay up late to watch my favorite shows. sometimes i go out for a run or play hoops. and then i go to bed for 6-8 hours and cycle begins again. the only time the cycle stops, and the wheels take a break from their mechanical turning is on fridays.

this friday it's going to take more than oiling the machine, and tuning up the engine. today is the day for major overhaul. no more obsessing about things i can't control.

for one, my favorite team, the seattle storm, is on a championship hunt. tomorrow is the first game of the finals but i'm not gonna be sitting on the edge waiting for the livescore to update on the internet. the website says, "page automatically refreshes every 2 minutes". clicking "refresh" button in rhythm with the beat my heart is not going to change anything out there in the worldwideweb---the page will still show fresh information only every 2 minutes.

so what do i do, in case you're wondering, during the two-minute lulls while i'm clicking "refresh" button frantically? i go to this little place in my head where i'm picturing what's going on in the game. i'm worrying if the point guard, whose nose was recently broken in a collision with an opposing player but is still able to play even after the surgery, is working the ball around or turning it over in lieu of the bothersome protective mask on face. is the star player getting her shots in? is player in foul trouble? is there a discernible panic in the eyes of the players that signals impending doom? after page "refreshes" and i see my team leading i would shout, in my head, "protect that lead or die!". oh, madness! i'm not even in front of the tv watching at those times. i'm at work, or in some internet cafe during my lunch hour (i had made up an excuse to my regular lunch mates just so i could skip over to the nearest netopia). the madness doesn't stop there. i have spent a total of 5 VLs this year to watch live games on TV, something that i might do again soon for the final game. and when i'm not watching games on tv or keeping track of live scores, i'm surfing the web for articles and news on the team. i have tracked down this forum that caters exclusively to loyal, crazy, obsessive fans like me. admitting is the first step to the cure so, hard as it to say, i admit that i have been stalking the seattle storm.

the long and short of it? heh, the "long" of it is behind you, the "short" of it is that i need to backpedal. start taking interest in the lives of other people, real people not just the ones i see on tv. old friends, new friends, crazy relatives, whack-job neighbors, the commuters i regularly sit with at the shuttle every morning who sleep during the whole trip, the people who work here, the people who are here but do not work when they're here (oh, but that's me), and etc., etc., some of them i find to be not as interesting to me as broken noses, zone defenses, blind referees, and pivotal do-or-die games, but i have to try to find that little spark in them that would hold my attention so i can keep in-step with what's real.


It seems nothing has changed. I'm still in the same state of mind.

P.S

Seattle's going for back-to-back championships

1 Comments:

At 7:14 PM, Blogger Talang Pula said...

i oisted an entry in my blog before i read yours. strange animals, weekends, 'no? they provoke a flurry of thoughts, from the menial to the bizaare.
me i just want to Use my weekend productively, if that's possible.
of late, i've been using it to watch uaap games, so your obssession with The Game isn't alien to me. just this past week, i was decidedly late for class because i had to finish this UP game. i loaned a teevee from a classmate, set it up on my dashboard, and was cheering the maroons on in great elation. or exasperation. depending on where the maroons are coming from.
we'll probably not make it to the final four, but we sure as hell had a wonderful ride. which must be what life is all about, come to think of it. the ride. gofigure.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home